New and Improved: Google Search for iPad

The Google Searchapp has been updated and it’s now better than ever on the iPad. The new features make searching for what you want much more interactive and easier as well. Google Instant starts displaying results as you’re typing the search term; a slide-in pane lets you slide back and forth between browse pages and results; visual search history can be accessed by swiping right to reveal snapshots of pages you’ve visited (organized by search terms), and more. Here’s the full list of “What’s New” for the iPad:

✓ See search results and websites side-by-side to quickly browse pages and results ✓ Swipe through the image carousel to see image results in full-size ✓ Compare search results as webpage snapshots in Instant Previews mode ✓ Use Google Instant and search suggestions to get to search results faster ✓ Revisit past searches with Visual Search History ✓ Highlight what you want to see on a webpage with the new Find button ✓ Easily share pages and +1 sites ✓ Quick access to other Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, Docs and more

After even the first few minutes of using Google Search on the iPad, the slide-in pane feature alone made it difficult for me to go back to Safari. The downside is that since it wasn’t designed to be a full fledged browser, the app doesn’t support tabbed browsing. Still, for day-to-day googlin’ on the iPad, the host of new features definitely makes this a keeper. Check out the video demo after this space.